I Made this Viral Billboard Using Marketing Psychology

This is me looking at the perfect billboard, and I made it. No way. That's so cool. Absolutely nuts. But why a billboard? Print is the purest form of advertising, but it's also a dying industry. Most companies have moved their budgets online to SEO, social media, and Google ads. And when people zigg, I zag. The thing is, I have no idea how to make a print ad. But I'm not going in blind because I have the science behind every viral ad ever made. And it's all in this book. This is Contagious, a New York Times bestseller that lays out six principles that make things go viral. And according to the author Jonah Burgerer, the more triggers you hit, the better the chance things will catch on. So our mission, hit all six. But first, we need something to put on the billboard. I work at Hrefs and our free SEO course has been watched over three and a half million times. I thought I was just teaching a useful skill. But when I read the comments and met people at conferences, I realized that this was so much bigger. If this video can change one life, imagine how many it could change if this billboard went viral. And that's where the six principles from Contagious come in. The first being practical value. Practical value is news you can use. It's the most direct rule. This is why deals and coupons work so well. They don't need to appeal to you in any special way. They're just inherently useful. They save you money. The SEO course does this because it's a useful lesson that's built people's careers and created new entrepreneurs for no cost. Great practical value. And that's the perfect call to action. Learn SEO for free. As the creative was coming together, I realized I'd completely forgotten one thing. We didn't actually have a place to put the billboard. So, I started googling local billboard companies and calling the ones with the biggest signs I could find. Um, so that runs about 25,000 for a 4-week period. We basically bill out in four-week periods. I realized that billboards are expensive and there was no choice but to lower my expectations. But then an idea came to mind that might honestly be better than the original plan, the subway. Around 400,000 people ride the Boston subway every weekday. There's billboards in every station and on every train. And after days of calls and negotiations, we finally locked one in. All right, so I just got an email back from Mary, our account executive from the advertising company, and it's some good news. She said, "I was able to connect with our ops team, and they are targeting posting two sets of two sheets next to each other at Arlington Station. I think these stairs, I think they go down to the actual train." And so basically anyone who's walking past here would see these. So, I feel like we'll actually get like a lot of people looking at it and hopefully it'll stand out enough to make this ad perform. There was just one thing left to do. Please send over the contracts for review. If everything looks good, we have a deal and said, "Let's go, Mary." Yes. With the location locked in, it was time to get back to building the perfect billboard. That brings us to the second principle from the book, public. This concept is better known as social proof. If everyone around you is doing something, it must be good and you should give it a shot. Like when you look down a street of restaurants, you feel better about going to the one full of people. So, we needed something that would clearly show social proof. At this point, I got stuck. I just kept circling the same ideas in my head. It's an SEO video. It's useful. It's free. It's helped a lot of people. Then I remembered the comment I could never forget and I immediately had a feeling that this could work as the main content for the billboard. And the moment I pictured it on a billboard, I knew it was it. 18 months ago, I was completely screwed. I was 30 and starting again from scratch with just clothes on my back. I used to sit with my back up against the wall, laptop on my knees, and I just watch all your videos over and over again. the site that I built using hrefs and using what I learned on this channel got me out of this mess. I mean, how can you forget that? By advertising a real YouTube comment, people will see that my videos actually helped a real person like just some guy 2759. Which brings us back to Burger's third principle, social currency. Share things that make us look good. It sounds like social proof, but it's almost the opposite. Instead of fitting in with everyone, this is about being better than everyone. It's what drives people to try to appear perfect on social media. They want to be in, whether it's in the no or in the limelight. It can appear in subtle ways, too, like Snapple Factax under the cap. You see some remarkable fact, and so you tell your friend, "Did you know that kangaroos can't walk backwards?" It makes you look more remarkable. You've initiated a fun conversation and now you guys are talking about Snapple. When it comes to this YouTube comment, it might not be immediately obvious how this offers social currency. But think about it. Why don't we just use a comment that says, "Thank you for the video." It's because this comment promises more than that. This guy leveled up and he transformed his life using our SEO courses. You read it and think, "Huh, maybe I can transform my life, too." That's social currency at work. But of course, we can't use the whole comment. Billboard real estate is precious. People often say you should use less than seven words. Our comment is 238. So how do we pick which parts to cut and which to keep? This brings us to the fourth principle, stories. People don't just share facts, they share stories. And when your product or idea is embedded inside a compelling story, it travels further and lasts longer in people's memory. The unforgettable YouTube comment is clearly its own story. and the beats are easy to remember. Guy has nothing but a mattress. Finds HRF's YouTube channel, builds a site, changes life. The ad was almost finished. We only had two triggers left to make a perfect viral billboard. Spirits were at an all-time high, but nothing could have prepared me for what would happen next. Okay, so some bad news. Yesterday, I got the contract from the advertising company and I sent it over to Legal. legal reviewed it, redlinined some items. I sent it back. Typical practice. I'm expecting them to make some changes, but turns out that they're not willing to change anything in their terms of service. And so, I've been told that I can't sign the agreement. And therefore, we're back at square one. And I don't even know if this is going to work anymore. The plan was dead. The perfect billboard gone before it was even made. I moved on. Months passed and eventually I forgot about it. Until one night at a baseball game, something caught my eye and suddenly the whole project sparked back to life. Everywhere I looked, ads, LED walls, giant logos, the jumbotron. Companies were spending a fortune just to be seen. It was beautiful, but way out of our budget. And then it clicked. Everyone in has to leave. The real opportunity wasn't in the stadium. It was just outside. What do we want? Okay. Okay. So, we're going to rent a billboard truck, a massive ad on wheels. We're going to circle the tens of thousands of fans around Fenway Park. We'll talk to people, get reactions, and maybe maybe even help kickstart people's career in digital marketing like we did for the guy in the comment. So, we found a vendor, passed the contracts to legal, said a little prayer, and boom, we were in business. But our billboard was still missing two critical principles that would make it perfect. And that takes us back to Burger's fifth principle, emotion. This is closely tied with the fourth principle, stories. People share things more when they're emotionally affected by them. And it's not just any emotion. It's sparked by high arousal emotions like awe or anger. This YouTube comment naturally does a great job of this. It's an awe inspiring story, one that amps you up to go change your own life. So, with both stories and emotion in mind, we can trim the comment down to its most important pieces. Something like, "I had nothing, just the mattress. Then I found eight drifts. The site that I built got me out." The billboard was basically done, but it was still missing the hardest part. the principle that separates something that goes viral for a day from something people remember for years. So, we're heading to the game right now. The billboard's on its way. So, now is a good time to tell you about the last principle in Contagious Triggers. These are the immediate associations our brains draw between concepts. When you see peanut butter, you think of jelly. Or when NASA landed a rover on Mars, sales of Mars bars shot up even though the candy had nothing to do with the mission. That's the power of a trigger. Top of mind, tip of tongue. Triggers are the hidden key to influencing human behavior. And it's important that the trigger occurs when people can actually act on it. Our trigger was simple. The mattress. It sounds funny, but it's the most specific detail of the story that stuck with me for the past 5 years. Plus, people see a mattress every day. And being near your bed is the time when many of us watch YouTube. Now all there was left to do is see the finished billboard in the wild. We're about to see it where that black car is coming. It's just to the right of it now. Okay. No way. No way. That's so cool. That actually looks so good. Absolutely nuts. We drove the billboard truck around Femway Park on game day, weaving through the crowds, filming reactions, getting feedback from people. What do you think? Um, it's like how appealing the the sign looked. What were your thoughts when you saw it? Interesting. Unique. We even took it to the beach. Now, at first glance, this might have looked like just a clever marketing stunt, but if you've been paying close attention, the billboard isn't the hero. It's this video. You actually just watched all six principles of viral marketing play out in real time. Practical value. This is contagious. Six principles that make things go viral. Public, social currency, stories, emotion. Let's go, Mary. Triggers. No way. That's so cool. Did you catch it?